One Year: 1990 | 2. Mandrake the Magician

Slow Burn

Slate Podcasts

News, Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Politics

4.6 • 25.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A middle-aged single dad in Chicago was outraged by all the cigarette billboards popping up in Black communities. In 1990, he picked up a paint roller and became an anti-tobacco vigilante. And he did it all under a secret identity. This episode was written by Josh Levin, One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung. This episode was produced by Kelly Jones, Olivia Briley, and Evan Chung. It was edited by Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis. Join Slate Plus to get a special behind-the-scenes conversation at the end of our season about how we put together our 1990 stories. Slate Plus members also get to listen to all Slate podcasts without any ads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm a school teacher. I taught elementary school for 34 and a half years. I've been living in Chicago all my life.
0:10.0	Gwen Jones grew up in Woodlawn, a black community on Chicago's South Side.
0:15.0	In the 1980s, she met a man who'd been raised in the same part of town,
0:20.0	but they didn't find each other in Chicago.
0:22.0	It was on a skiing trip.
0:25.0	Can I tell you about that?
0:27.0	Sure.
0:28.0	Okay. I went on a skiing trip.
0:30.0	Gwen had signed up for a vacation for Black skiers and when she got to the mountain she caught sight of something that commanded her attention.
0:39.0	I was down at the bottom and I looked up at the top and I saw this handsome man going down the slopes
0:47.4	he had on a wide brim hat a double-brecht suit and a duster when it was long duster coats it was
0:57.2	flying all you know in the wind and I'll never see anybody ski down the slopes like that.
1:03.4	I mean, it was just, it was awesome to me.
1:05.9	You were like, this is a guy I want to get to know.
1:08.5	Yes, totally.
1:10.8	And plus, like I said, he was a good looking man.
1:15.1	Lake Gwen this man was a blacks year and he was on her trip which meant they'd both be going back to
1:21.2	Chicago. We got on the bus together and then we started our conversation.
1:26.8	That man's name was Henry Brown and once Gwen and Henry started talking, they never really stopped.
1:34.0	He had a gift of words.
1:35.6	He was very smart, very intelligent, and very charismatic.
1:41.2	How long did it take for you guys to kind of get into a relationship?
	...

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